Coming off a somewhat sub-par showing at the B1G Championships two weeks ago, the Buckeyes looked to turn things around the this weekend's National Championships. Unfortunately, the meet was a complete disaster for tOSU.
Max Mays, the 12th ranked Weight Thrower in the country, had the best weekend of any of the five Buckeyes, finishing 12th in the WT in 20.08m. Matching his season's best would have placed him 6th. Max had been somewhat up and down this year, and this performance fell somewhat in the middle of those extremes. Not good, but not bad, either.
Matt DeChant, ranked 4th in the country, took 10th in the Shot Put in 18.68m, a throw that was only 0.01m better than his season's worst (outside of his B1G performance). Tying is PR would have put him 2nd, and a typical throw for what he had done this year easily would have placed him in the scoring. Very bad end of the season for Matt.
Cory Leslie finished 15th in the Mile, coming in last in his preliminary heat, just under two seconds behind the final qualifier from his heat. All eight runners in the heat stayed together for the first 7 laps, but on lap 8 when everyone moved Cory was unable to respond. Not a disaster performance, but not what he was looking for either.
Thomas Murdaugh also struggled, finishing 15th in the 400 in 47.04. Murdaugh came through the first lap of his prelim heat in second, but struggled over the final lap, ultimately running slower than he did two weeks ago on a flat 200 meter track. Penn State's Brady Gehret, who Murdaugh spanked at B1G's, finished 3rd.
Not to be outdone, Mike Hartfield also posted his worst performance of the season, jumping 7.42m in the Long Jump to finish 14th. Matching his season's best would have placed him 6th.
The Big Ten as a whole, however, had an excellent meet. Four teams finished in the top 11 (Indiana and Minny tied for 6th, Iowa t8th, and PSU t11th).
IU's Derek Drouin won the national title in the high jump while Illinois' Andrew Riley took first in the 60 hurdles. IU's DMR took 2nd behind a crazy 3:53 anchor leg from Andy Bayer and Minnesota's Ben Blankenship took 2nd in the 3k. Lot's of other great performances as well.
Results are here:
http://www.flashresults.com/2011_Meets/indoor/03-11-NCAADiv1/Day1.htm
The good news is that the meet is over and that all of these national qualifiers return next season. The bad news, is, obviously, that every one of the team's top guys did horribly. I don't know if perhaps they were sick? It's clearly not a case of one coach not peaking his people right, since we are dealing with a jumper, a sprinter, a distance guy, and two throwers.
In any event, onto Outdoors, where the Buckeyes will welcome the services of Chad Balyo, who was out of indoor eligibility. It would not surprise me to see Green and/or Leslie redshirt this season, however. I'm excited to see how Bogle does on the longer hurdles, and I hope that Matt Terrell can get to form, he is someone who can be a real asset to this team.
The Bucks return to action the weekend of March 25. Looks like the distance guys will head to the Stanford Invite while the rest of the team heads to Mississippi State for the SEC/Big Ten challenge.
) starts at 6:00PM tonight. Distance evens will be run tonight (with the exception of the mile) and sprints and relays will be held tomorrow. Here is the meet schedule: